Posts Tagged ‘Sudan’

On the instant all the sixteen troops swung
round and locked up into a long galloping line,
and the 21st Lancers were committed to their first charge in war.Two hundred and fifty yards away the dark-blue men
were firing madly in a thin film of light-blue smoke.
Their bullets struck the hard gravel into the air,
and the troopers, to shield their faces from the
stinging dust, bowed their helmets forward,
like the Cuirassiers at Waterloo.The pace was fast and the distance short.
Yet, before it was halfcovered, the whole aspect of the affair changed.
A deep crease in the ground – a dry watercourse,
a khor – appeared where all had seemed smooth,
level plain; and from it there sprang, with the
suddenness of a pantomime effect and a
high-pitched yell, a dense white mass of mennearly as long as our front and about twelve deep.
A score of horsemen and a dozen bright flags rose
as if by magic from the earth. Eager warriorssprang forward to anticipate the shock. The rest
stood firm to meet it.

Durch diese Linie hindurch

The Lancers acknowledged the apparition only by
an increase of pace.Each man wanted sufficient momentum to drive
through such a solid line.The flank troops, seeing that they overlapped,
curved inwards like the horns of a moon.But the whole event was a matter of seconds.
The riflemen, firing bravely to the last, were
swept head over heels into the khor, and jumping
down with them, at full gallop and in the closest
order, the British squadrons struck the fierce
brigade with one loud furious shout. The collision
was prodigious. Nearly thirty Lancers, men and horses,
and at least two hundred Arabs were overthrown.

Wundersame zehn Sekunden

The shock was stunning to both sides, and for perhaps
ten wonderful seconds no man heeded his enemy.
Terrified horses wedged in the crowd, bruised and shaken
men, sprawling in heaps, struggled, dazed and stupid,
to their feet, panted, and looked about them.Several fallen Lancers had even time to re-mount.
Meanwhile the impetus of the cavalry carried them on.
As a rider tears through a bullfinch, the officers forced
their way through the press; and as an iron rake might be
drawn through a heap of shingle, so the regiment followed.
They shattered the Dervish array, and, their pace reduced
to a walk, scrambled out of the khor on the further side,
leaving a score of troopers behind them, and dragging on
with the charge more than a thousand Arabs. Then, and not
till then, the killing began; and thereafter each man saw
the world along his lance, under his guard, or through the
back-sight of his pistol; and each had his own strange
tale to tell.Stubborn and unshaken infantry hardly ever meet stubborn
and unshaken cavalry. Either the infantry run away and are
cut down in flight, or they keep their heads and destroy
nearly all the horsemen by their musketry.On this occasion two living walls had actually crashed
together.
The Dervishes fought manfully. They tried to hamstring
the horses, They fired their rifles, pressing the muzzles
into the very bodies of their opponents. They cut reins
and stirrup-leathers. They flung their throwing-spears
with great dexterity. They tried every device of cool,determined men practised in war and familiar with cavalry;
and, besides, they swung sharp, heavy swords which bit deep.
The hand-to-hand fighting on the further side of the khor
lasted for perhaps one minute.

Pferde fassen wieder Tritt

Then the horses got into their stride again, the pace
increased, and the Lancers drew out from among their
antagonists.Within two minutes of the collisionevery living man was
clear of the Dervish mass. All who had fallen werecut
at with swords till they stopped quivering, but no
artistic mutilations were attempted.

The Dervish dominion was born of war, existed by war, and fell by war.
It began on the night of the sack of Khartoum. It ended abruptly thirteen
years later in the battle of Omdurman.
(Churchill: River War. CHAPTER III: THE DERVISH EMPIRE)

On the 3rd of July the whole railway from Wady Halfato the Atbara was
finished, and the southern terminus was established in the great
entrenched camp at the confluence of the rivers. The question of
supply was then settled once and for all.
In less than a week stores sufficient for three months were poured along
the line, and the exhausting labours of the commissariat officers ended.
Their relief and achievement were merged in the greater triumph of the
Railway Staff. The director and his subalterns had laboured long, and
their efforts were crowned with complete success.
On the day that the first troop train steamed into the fortified camp at the
confluence of the Nile and the Atbara rivers the doom of the Dervishes
was sealed. It had now become possible with convenience and speed
to send into the heart of the Soudan great armies independent of the
season of the year and of the resources of the country; to supply them
not only with abundant food and ammunition, but with all the varied
paraphernalia of scientific war; and to support their action on land by
a powerful flotilla of gunboats, which could dominate the river and
command the banks, and could at any moment make their way past
Khartoum even to Sennar, Fashoda, or Sobat.
Though the battle was not yet fought, the victory was won.
The Khalifa, his capital, and his army were now withinthe Sirdar's reach.
It remained only to pluck the fruit in the most convenient hour, with the
least trouble and at the smallest cost.(Churchill: River War. Chapter VIII: The Desert Railway)

Alone in this vast expanse stood Railhead--a canvas town of 2,500inhabitants, complete with station, stores, post-office, telegraph-office,and canteen, and only connected with the living world of men and ideasby two parallel iron streaks, three feet six inches apart, growing dim andnarrower in a long perspective until they were twisted and blurred by themirage and vanished in the indefinite distance.Every morning in the remote nothingness there appeared a black speckgrowing larger and clearer, until with a whistle and a welcome clatter,amid the aching silence of ages, the 'material' train arrived, carryingits own water and 2,500 yards of rails, sleepers, and accessories. At nooncame another speck, developing in a similar manner into a supply train,also carrying its own water, food and water for the half-battalion of theescort and the 2,000 artificers and platelayers, and the letters,newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, soda-water, and cigarettes which enablethe Briton to conquer the world without discomfort. And presently the emptytrains would depart, reversing the process of their arrival, and vanishinggradually along a line which appeared at last to turn up into the airand run at a tangent into an unreal world.